Behold the heirloom tomato

September 23, 2008

From staff reports Amy Goldman's gorgeously photographed ode to heirloom tomatoes arrived late this summer with all the jaw-dropping beauty of a coffee table tome. But like her previous volumes on disappearing varieties of melons and squash, ''The Heirloom Tomato: From Garden to Table'' carries a frightening message. Goldman, a self-described ''vegetable activist,'' has written an impassioned call to amateur gardeners to reclaim the odd, eccentric and delicious tomato plants whose very existence has been threatened by industrialized agriculture. ''Heirloom tomatoes are designed to be homegrown,'' she said recently from her Rhinebeck, N.Y., farm, where she was taking a break from harvesting a tomato crop delayed for a few weeks by this summer's unusually abundant rainfall. ''These are the people's tomato - of, by and for the people.'' Find recipes for these and other stars of summer harvest on Wednesday's Taste page in the American News.